Navigation

Simon Tucker Group

Tue, 11/15/2011 - 14:24 — rock_mumbles

I was blessed to play with the Simon Tucker Group for almost 3 years. Simon did the singer, songwriter, guitar player, arranger, conductor parts, Bill Wilcox played drums, I played bass. In the time I was around, Simon grew big time, he became a band leader, his singing, songwriting, arranging, and guitar playing all went to a new level of musicianship (sometimes disconnected from planet earth). Bill is a drummer who doesn't play drum beats, he plays songs on his drums. Bill's drumming was the glue that connected Simon's guitar and my bass together, often Bill's hands would be right with Simon and his feet would be right there with me ... playing with Simon and Bill was by far the highest level musical experience I've had ( all I can say is wow, thanks guys! ).

In late 2009 I started having issues with my hands, I guess my age was showing, the demands of playing at the level of someone like Simon was starting to whisper in my ear that it was time for a change. So September 2010 I stepped aside and Simon got Josh Simon, a phenomenal bassist from Spokane to take the bass parts to the next level. Anyway keep your ears open for the soon to be released Simon Tucker Group EP. I listened to parts of a direct from the board CD it sounded really good. Simon connected with top level people in Portland to do the recording project and it sounds amazing!!!

Simon has been using amps I've either modified or built since May 2008, first it was two modified Valve Juniors then came the first LiteIIb (Baby Will pcb), then an experiment, a sort of Blackfaced 5E3, then a tightened up 5E3 ... for the last year or so Simon's main amp has been the slightly modified 5E3. For the EP he used his 5E3, and two of my latest 18 Watt amps, an eyelet board built LiteIIb with proper transformers and proper tone/sound, and a SuperliteIIb, a slightly higher gain preamp glued to the same 18 Watt output section. Simon gave my amps a nice plug on his new website, http://www.simontuckergroup.com

here's a couple of Simon Tucker Group songs recorded last year ... with the current line up, Simon, Bill and Josh ...